Virtualizing Your Business

Business Management asks a panel of experts for their thoughts on the benefits of virtualization, how to manage an effective implementation and where the future lies for the business tool.

“A hosted virtual desktop solution delivers greater flexibility, but requires the orchestration of the groups that manage server, storage and network infrastructure”
-Jerry Chen, VMware

The Panel:
Zane Adam, Senior Director of Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft
Jerry Chen, Senior Director, Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, VMware
John Kish, CEO, Pano Logic Inc
Jim McHugh, VP Datacenter Marketing, Sun Microsystems Inc
Roberto Moctezuma, VP and General Manager for Desktop Solutions, HP

BM. The potential of virtualization, when implemented correctly, is enormous. What are the benefits of virtualization and what are the key areas of improvement?
Zane Adam. The benefits vary depending on the maturity of the IT organization. The first and primary benefit of virtualization is reduction in hardware, which means reduction in hardware costs, and then with that goes reduction in utilization of electrical power, so the consumption of electricity goes down because of the consolidation that comes in. It is not just because you’re consolidating the servers, but it is also because heating, cooling, all of those requirements that start going down as the footprint of the number of servers go down. The datacenter can become more efficient without increasing the footprint of the datacenter and without increasing the utilization of electrical power.

Jerry Chen. VMware customers of all sizes across all industries turn to VMware’s industry-leading virtualization platform for the ROI of building the most efficient, flexible datacenters with the performance and reliability to run business-critical applications and services. They can deliver high availability, allocate resources dynamically and automate management of applications and hardware.

For the enterprise desktop, VMware View is used by customers to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops hosted in the datacenter, solving focused problems such as addressing data and access security and compliance. It enables key business capabilities such as fast and flexible desktop provisioning for new offices or call centers, and centralized management, security and automation.

John Kish. Businesses that leverage virtualization can deliver superior service at lower cost with greater security and control. While most businesses focused initially on server consolidation, the same set of benefits applies to desktop consolidation. Desktop consolidation is the ability to run the desktop operating system and applications as virtual machines on centralized servers, leaving absolutely nothing at the endpoint to manage or secure. In this model the endpoint device is not a PC or thin client but rather zero clients that have no processor or software and nothing to manage or secure. Only a zero client architecture like the Pano System delivers the full benefits of reduced operating costs since all software assets are consolidated in the datacenter or network closet. Use of a zero client ensures that company data is safe even if the endpoint is lost or stolen.

Jim McHugh. Today, everyone is focused on cost savings. And with virtualization, one of the key drivers to achieve that is by leveraging workload mobility. With virtualization, workloads are no longer bound to where they were initially implemented. Companies have the flexibility to react to business changes, by moving workloads to new machines, moving a datacenter from one place to another or a variety of other scenarios. And the benefits of virtualization are similar whether it's server, storage or desktop virtualization.

We're seeing tremendous improvements in the number of virtual machines we can run on hardware systems, driven by more efficient hardware design as well as software improvements. The cost of storage is also coming down, and radical improvements to the software implementations are making virtual machine images consume much less disk space than before, which drives the overall costs down.

Roberto Moctezuma. We most often hear our customers concerned with several key business issues that virtualization can help resolve. The most common are compliance and security, keeping agile to ensure time to market delivery of products or services, and the need for more flexible work environments for their employees. From an IT perspective, business continuity and disaster recovery, simplifying manageability, and reducing operating costs and resource consumption are the chief concerns. Client virtualization is a cost-effective tool to help businesses overcome all of these challenges.

BM. In your opinion, how can firms ensure they have an effective implementation strategy in place?
JC. Any shift in IT process requires thorough analysis of existing costs and processes, qualification of use cases, and identification of all the stakeholders. A hosted virtual desktop solution delivers greater flexibility, but requires the orchestration of the groups that manage server, storage and network infrastructure. VMware has many partners who deliver end-to-end services to customers deploying thousands of virtual desktops to help them qualify their existing environment, design the right architecture to support their use cases, and roll out the solution to achieve optimal management efficiencies.

JK. An effective desktop consolidation strategy complements the backend server architecture with a purpose-built client device.  PCs were designed as standalone systems, and thin clients were designed for Terminal Services; neither is ideal for desktop consolidation. Clients that are purpose-built for desktop consolidation – like those from Pano Logic – are critical because they completely eliminate the endpoint from the management equation. Businesses that virtualize the desktop but do not replace the legacy endpoint with a zero client achieve only a fraction of the return on their investment since the management burden still stretches across the entire distributed workplace.

JM. You want to work with an experienced vendor – one who understands the various requirements and can offer a complete solution. The other thing you should do is look at the before and after of the cost equation. If the solution comes at an equivalent cost to what you're currently spending today, you're not saving any money you're just becoming more mobile, which by itself doesn't necessarily justify the move to virtualization.

Since virtualization is a very large area, you should set a concrete goal and look to maximize the cost savings for that goal. Don't try to attack everything at the same time.

RM. Companies need to re-think virtualization in terms of managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments and in terms of the full business process or service value chain. Today, most virtualization projects focus on an individual technology element or application without consideration of the broader business environment, leading to the use of different tools and processes and adding complexity and redundancy. HP’s approach starts with a look applications and business services and carries through all the way down through infrastructure and end-user computing solutions, addressing the specific needs at each level. 

ZA. While planning this, one of the core things to realize from an IT implementation perspective is as you virtualize, you want to ensure that your virtual environment is an open environment and not a closed, proprietary environment, so you’re not creating a virtual island. Ensure that the virtualization deployment is for the long haul and not just a point solution, which is how people have been designing it in the past.

BM. It’s been reported that firms are failing to manage virtualization, leading to virtual machine sprawl as servers are created to meet a need but are not removed when they have fulfilled their purpose. What’s your advice to firms to ensure they avoid these difficulties?
JK. Virtual machine sprawl has the potential of being orders of magnitude worse when virtualizing desktops.  Desktops easily outnumber servers by at least 20 to one. At the extreme, virtual desktops can be completely disposable and may be deleted and re-provisioned after just a single use. Businesses need a system that delivers a ready-to-use work environment that is appropriate for the intended task, even though behind the scenes it is built upon multiple discrete technology components. The key to achieving this capability is the purpose-built management logic that ties the components into a co-ordinated, cohesive system. For instance, the Pano System supports pooling of virtual machines which can be provisioned to tightly match demand. The same management system controls user access and ensures users are given only the resources to which they are entitled.

JM. When deploying physical hardware, there is usually a system of checks and balances that are based on cost, and this doesn't just go away with virtualization. The same checks and balances should still be in place. If you leave a virtual machine lying around when you shouldn't, it costs you something. Over years of working in datacenters we've created policies that define when we add machines, retire them, and so on, and the same rules should apply to virtual machines. In addition, there are some great products available, which administrators can leverage to help manage workflow across both their virtual and physical assets.

RM. Look for solution providers with offerings that are orchestrated to work in a virtual environment and offer tools that let you manage physical and virtual devices in the same way, from the same interface – for example, most HP servers and blade clients are certified for compatibility with leading virtualization software products from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware – and HP also offers integrated management and business service automation tools that allow you to automate provisioning, maintenance and compliance tasks across physical and virtual service boundaries to eliminate redundancies, enable governance to IT policy and drive down administration overhead. With the right processes, tools and virtualization technologies, and a proactive approach to management, businesses can avoid these common issues and ensure that virtualization is helping the organization achieve its business goals and priorities.

ZA. With the right management tools, you can track the virtual machine lifecycle from the time you’ve spawned one to the time you destroy one. We have a product called Virtual Machine Manager, which works by implementing or shutting down a virtual machine as workload is higher or lower, so that you can control the process. In real terms our customers all end up saving multiples of money, and most of the time the ROI for virtualizing is less than seven or eight months, depending on how complex that environment is.

JC. Because you can provision a new server or desktop with a few mouse clicks, it is best to create a set of policies and processes to manage the lifecycle of virtual machines, from provisioning to operation to retirement. VMware offers the product VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager to automate virtualization workflow so all virtual machines, server and desktop, are in compliance with the policies your organization sets.

BM. Gartner analyst George Weiss believes that most companies today are in the first stage of virtualization, consolidating, and virtualizing servers as cost cutting measures, typically with a single vendor. Can you explain the next phase of virtualization?
JM. The next phase is really mobility – consolidating and virtualizing servers is just the first step, the next one is that developers will be creating applications specifically for these virtualized platforms. Sun believes open source and free desktop virtualization tools can accelerate this. And we believe that developers having virtualization tools available to them for free on their desktops will help propel us into this next phase.

RM. I’ve mentioned the need to dynamically link physical and virtual resources, but it’s not a pervasive practice just yet. I believe that will soon change as customers realize the value and simplicity of using the right tools to manage virtual and physical devices with the same people, using the same processes, under the same governance guidelines.

Client virtualization is also emerging as an opportunity to achieve greater return on your overall IT investment by improving the reliability, security, manageability and flexibility of the computing infrastructure, while still providing the exceptional, personal computing experience end users demand. This user experience will continue to become more robust as multimedia compression and USB device management continues to evolve, along with hypervisor technology and other means of dividing and securing the personal and business experience within a single, ubiquitous device. 

ZA. The next phase is managing servers, both physical and virtual, through a single pane of glass, followed by automation. Automation of the workload, is one of the core next investments you’ll see, and all those investments are actually, if you think of it from a datacenter perspective, going to make the datacenter more dynamic, which aligns to the following statements: where the IT organization can dynamically adjust to the workload or requirements of the business organization, and that’s where you’ll see more of this happen.

JC. At VMworld Europe in Cannes, France, we met with customers to hear about their experiences. Many have desktop virtualization in their environments, and are building broader use cases in their organizations to reap the operational cost saving benefits on a larger scale. We are adding improvements to deliver a better user experience. With VMware View 3, released late last year, we improved end-user experience for playing rich multimedia, and when the PC-over-IP protocol we demoed at the conference is available the second half of this year, our customers will be able to deliver a truly uncompromised user experience.

JK. The next phase of virtualization is about the desktop. Desktop consolidation is currently lagging server consolidation by about two to three years. While the current economic malaise is slowing adoption, there is no doubt that broad based desktop consolidation is going to happen. In the near term, most businesses will adopt desktop consolidation via tactical projects that minimize capital investment and provide necessary, but not mission critical, capabilities. Integrated solutions that are easy to deploy and purpose-built for desktop consolidation will predominate. During the early parts of this phase it is important to start building the skill set so that once the capital budgets open up, you are ready to go.

BM. In your opinion, what’s the future of virtualization, and where do you expect it to be in the next 18 to 24 months?
RM. I think the future of virtualization will somewhat mirror that of the technology industry as a whole, with smaller providers consolidating with the industry leaders – in this case HP and partners such as Citrix, VMware and Microsoft.  This will allow each of these companies to deliver even greater value to customers with new virtual client models like enabling virtual environments directly on the client device, facilitating offline scenarios and the ability to synchronize virtual sessions from anywhere on any device. Combined with a focus on differentiation around the end-user experience, these elements will continue to fuel rapid growth in the client virtualization space over the next couple of years.

ZA. We view base virtualization to be the enabling platform for the dynamic data center. That’s where we see the evolution before you build up with the management stack and automation stack on top of that.

In addition to technology you’ll see investments being made in how IT departments manage their virtual environment, which is a little different to the physical environment. The change management, security, process and policy management, lifecycle management, all of that is where it will evolve. There is extremely rapid deployment happening, so you’re seeing that shift from physical to virtual start happening extremely aggressively now versus even 24 months ago.

JC. Today, virtualization is helping customers evolve the datacenter by eliminating complexity, enabling IT to spend less time on maintenance of applications and infrastructure by viewing all their resources as a pool, or internal cloud, that can mold to fit their business needs.

VMware announced its focus on creating this new layer as its Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS) Initiative and we expect to ship the first instantiation in 2009. With the VDC-OS, the management layer to enable service providers to deliver external clouds and federate with internal clouds, and the evolving technologies for desktop virtualization, all the elements needed to deliver IT as a service come together. IT organizations can be empowered with the flexibility to manage desktops as a service internally or in co-operation with a hosting provider, while reaping the same benefits of server virtualization.

JK. The future of desktop virtualization is largely about desktop consolidation. Adoption should accelerate dramatically in the next 12-24 months since the PC refresh has been deferred due to the economic malaise and businesses’ reluctance to adopt Vista. With the introduction of Windows 7 and the opening of capital budgets likely to coincide, there may be a ‘perfect storm’ resulting in the wholesale reassessment of desktop computing. Purpose-built zero clients will be the endpoint of choice for desktop consolidation as their cost is driven down, and management tools and software assets purpose-built for desktop consolidation will maximize the value business derives from investments in virtualization.

JM. The next big phase is obviously the cloud. Vendors are already offering services where people can develop applications in the cloud or for the cloud. This allows a developer to take direct advantage of virtualization, instead of virtualization just being a way to access and manage an application as if it was running on physical hardware. And remember that cloud computing is not just adopting a cloud that's owned by someone else, but also enabling organizations to create their own clouds – running behind their own firewalls.

What the analyst’s say
According to new research, virtualization is being implemented in companies of all sizes. A Forrester Research report, ‘The State of Emerging SMB Hardware Trends: 2008 to 2009,’ released in March 2009, found server virtualization being implemented in a majority of mid-market companies. The results of the survey revealed that 53 percent of small and midsize businesses have already implemented x86 server virtualization or are doing so in the next 12 months, and 74 percent of SMB respondents said they hope to lower PC costs with alternative technologies, such as various forms of desktop or client virtualization.